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A Houston-based space company just released a tantalizing sneak preview — an image sequence of its robotic spacecraft flying over the moon‘s south pole, near its planned landing site.
The destination is Mons Mouton, one of NASA‘s potential landing locations for its Artemis astronauts. Intuitive Machines‘ Athena moon lander began circling the moon on March 3, just one day after a competitor, Firefly Aerospace, landed on the lunar surface without a hitch.
This marks Intuitive Machines’ second journey to the moon, following its success last year in becoming the first business — rather than a government space program — to touch down on the surface without crashing so badly it ended the mission. But telling the flight controllers to “break a leg” might not be the good-luck wish they want to hear ahead of Athena’s descent: Even though its uncrewed Odysseus lander was able to send back some data in 2024, it damaged one of its struts and ended up on its side.
The latest mission, referred to as IM-2 or PRIME-1, is slated for a moon landing at 11:32 a.m. CT on March 6. Intuitive Machines and NASA will provide live event coverage, starting at 10:30 a.m. CT.
In the video above, the Athena lander can be seen flying over the lunar south pole near its intended landing site.
If it succeeds in getting to the surface, the company’s mission will be among the first onsite demonstrations of resource detection on the moon. A drill and mass spectrometer, a device that identifies the kinds of elements or particles in a substance, will measure the potential presence of gasses in the lunar soil. A Laser Retroreflector Array on the top deck of the lander also will bounce laser light back at any orbiting or incoming spacecraft to give future missions a permanent reference point on the moon. Other instruments will test a surface communications system and deploy a drone that can hop along the lunar surface.
Athena is the second Commercial Lunar Payload Services-supported lander of the year. The NASA program has invested $2.6 billion in contracts with private-sector vendors to help deliver instruments to the moon and send back crucial data.
Athena flies over the mid-latitudes of the moon in the above image sequence.
But landing on the moon remains onerous. The moon’s exosphere provides virtually no drag to slow a spacecraft down as it approaches the ground. Furthermore, there are no GPS systems on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot.
A combination of gravity and inertia factors seemed to stymie Intuitive Machines’ previous landing. Everything on the moon is “six times tippier,” said Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Florida, then in a post on X. The Japanese moon lander SLIM, short for Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, experienced a similar outcome.
“Why did we end up at a 30 degree angle? We know exactly why we did,” Trent Martin, senior vice president of Intuitive Machines’ space systems, told reporters during a news conference. “There was an issue with the laser altimeter that we used during the final operation just before landing that would have told us exactly how close we were to the surface.”
Credit: Intuitive Machines
Instead of using the laser altimeter, flight controllers actually were using the camera systems on board the spacecraft, which were less accurate, ultimately resulting in a harder landing than planned. Martin said an investigation into the spacecraft data resulted in 85 upgrades, including contingencies that should allow Athena to land up to 10 degrees off in any direction — perhaps more — and still complete the mission objectives.
Meanwhile, NASA is trying to troubleshoot problems with another spacecraft that shared a rocket with Athena. Engineers were able to establish communication with NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer in space the day of its launch, only to lose it the next morning, Feb. 27.
NASA said the team is working with ground stations to reestablish telemetry and assess power system issues to try to fix it. The space agency hasn’t since provided an update on the spacecraft.
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The Houston-based space company Intuitive Machines is about to attempt its second moon landing, after a successful touchdown for NASA last year.
